Pope Francis Gives Candid Speech On 'Exodus' Of Followers From The Catholic Church

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Pope Francis, in a stunningly candid
assessment of the state of the Catholic Church, said on Saturday
it should look in the mirror and ask why so many people are
leaving the faith of their fathers.

On the penultimate day of his trip to Brazil, Francis
delivered a long address to the country's bishops in which he
suggested elements of what could become a blueprint for stopping
what he called an "exodus."

"I would like all of us to ask ourselves today: are we still a
Church capable of warming hearts?" he said in a speech remarkable
for its frankness about the hemorrhaging of the Church in many
countries.

The Argentine pope, who is in Rio for a Catholic international
jamboree known as World Youth Day, referred to what he called
"the mystery of those who leave the Church" because they think it
"can no longer offer them anything meaningful or important."

The Church has been losing members throughout the world to
secularism and to other religions, including in Latin
America, where evangelical groups have won over many converts.

He acknowledged that many people see the Church as a "relic of
the past," too caught up in itself, and a "prisoner of its own
rigid formulas."

While he said the Church "must remain faithful" to its religious
doctrine, it had to be closer to the people and their real
problems.

"Today, we need a Church capable of walking at people's side, of
doing more than simply listening to them," he said.

"At times we lose people because they don't understand what we
are saying, because we have forgotten the language of simplicity
and import an intellectualism foreign to our people," he said.

In Brazil, the number of Catholics has dwindled rapidly in
the decades since its once-rural population moved increasingly to
major cities, where modern consumer culture has overtaken more
provincial mores and where Protestant denominations, aggressively
courting followers in urban outskirts and shantytowns, have won
many converts.

"We need a Church capable of restoring citizenship to her many
children who are journeying, as it were, in an exodus," he said.

The address to the bishops complemented an earlier homily
in Rio's cathedral, where he urged priests worldwide to
leave their comfortable surroundings to go out and serve the poor
and needy.

"We cannot keep ourselves shut up in parishes, in our
communities, when so many people are waiting for the Gospel," he
said in the sermon of a Mass in Rio's cathedral.

Since his election in March as the first non-European pope in
1,300 years, Francis has been prodding priests, nuns and bishops
to think less about their careers in the Church and listen more
to the cries of those who are hungry to fill both material and
spiritual needs.

"It is not enough simply to open the door in welcome, but we must
go out through that door and meet the people!" he said.

'SLUM CARDINAL'

Known as the "slum cardinal" in his
native Argentina because of his austere lifestyle and
visits to poor areas, Francis made a clarion call to clergy to
take risks and go out among the faithful who need them most.

"It is in the 'favelas' and 'villas miseria' that one must go to
seek and to serve Christ," he said, quoting the late Mother
Teresa of Calcutta and using the terms used
in Brazil and Argentina for shantytowns.

Francis has set a new tone in the Vatican, rejecting the lush
papal residence his predecessors used in the Apostolic
Palace and living instead in a small suite in a Vatican
guest house, and often eating in the common dining room.

The pope spoke as hundreds of thousands of young people were
converging on Rio's famed Copacabana beach for an all night
prayer vigil ahead of concluding ceremonies on Sunday, when he
returns to Rome.

Earlier, in a talk at Rio's theater, he said leaders must address
the issues raised in protests in Brazil, saying dialogue was
the only way to resolve the issues.

Latin America's largest nation has been rocked by protests
against corruption, the misuse of public money and the high cost
of living. Most of the protesters are young.

He urged leaders not to remain deaf to "the outcry, the call for
justice (that) continues to be heard even today" and, in an
apparent reference to corruption, spoke of "the task of
rehabilitating politics."